Super Massive Black Holes and the Origin of High-Velocity Stars

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether high-velocity stars in our galaxy's halo can originate from stars accelerated during close interactions between a decaying globular cluster and a supermassive black hole, based on high-precision simulations.

Contribution

It tests a hypothesis that interactions with a supermassive black hole can produce high-velocity stars, using detailed N-body simulations of globular cluster dynamics.

Findings

Stars can be strongly accelerated during close encounters with the black hole.

The process can produce stars with velocities consistent with observed high-velocity stars.

The results support the hypothesis that such interactions contribute to high-velocity star populations.

Abstract

The origin of high velocity stars observed in the halo of our Galaxy is still unclear. In this work we test the hypothesis, raised by results of recent high precision $N$-body simulations, of strong acceleration of stars belonging to a massive globular cluster orbitally decayed in the central region of the host galaxy where it suffers of a close interaction with a super massive black hole, which, for these test cases, we assumed $10^8$ M$_\odot$ in mass.